Most genealogical societies and groups encourage members to record and index family records as an important way to preserve family history records for future generations.

Whether you record marriage records at the court house, cemetery records throughout the county or devote your time to some other form of data, these contributions are invaluable.

In the past these projects have involved hours of tedious work - hours that fewer people find time for in the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives.

Fortunately, that may be changing.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been sponsoring a Family Search Indexing project that allows volunteers to index family history documents in the comfort of their own homes sitting in front of their own computer screens.

Their goal is to index as many documents as they can find and to offer the finished products free of charge for researchers everywhere at familysearch.org.

You need not be a LDS member to volunteer although some LDS stakes have teams participating. And you may spend as little or as much time as you wish contributing to the project.

All projects are administered by Family Search Indexing and participating genealogical and historical societies and cover a wide variety of subjects.

Marriage, birth and death records for multiple states, tax records, Freedman Bureau records and state and federal census records all appear on the list of current projects.

Right now the Mississippi 1900 federal census, a challenging handwritten work that has been digitally reproduced for indexing on screen, is among the active projects. So should this be the record you choose to work on, your volunteer hours can benefit Mississippi researchers right off the bat.

Signing up is easy and you receive your password in a day or less. Tutorials are offered. You are sent a single page to index at a time and when you send it back, you are sent another.

There are no set numbers of names you must do. You work at your own pace and there is always support for questions or problems that arise.

What a wonderful opportunity to contribute your time - as little or as much of it as you have to give!